One of my earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of my relatives and not being able to. And I was just a little kid, so I didn't really understand why, but as I got older, I realized we had drug addiction in my family, including later cocaine addiction.
Jedna z prvých vecí, na ktoré sa pamätám, je, keď som sa snažil zobudiť člena rodiny a nepodarilo sa mi to. Bol som iba dieťa, nerozumel som prečo, potom som vyrástol a všimol som si v rodine závislosť na drogách, vrátane závislosti na kokaíne.
I'd been thinking about it a lot lately, partly because it's now exactly 100 years since drugs were first banned in the United States and Britain, and we then imposed that on the rest of the world. It's a century since we made this really fateful decision to take addicts and punish them and make them suffer, because we believed that would deter them; it would give them an incentive to stop.
V poslednej dobe som na to veľa myslel, z časti lebo práve uplynulo 100 rokov od zákazu užívania drog v USA a Veľkej Británii a neskôr aj na celom svete. Uplynulo storočie odkedy sme urobili nešťastné rozhodnutie potrestať závislých, nech trpia, lebo sme verili, že ich to odradí a povzbudí k náprave.
And a few years ago, I was looking at some of the addicts in my life who I love, and trying to figure out if there was some way to help them. And I realized there were loads of incredibly basic questions I just didn't know the answer to, like, what really causes addiction? Why do we carry on with this approach that doesn't seem to be working, and is there a better way out there that we could try instead?
Pred pár rokmi som pozoroval niekoľkých závislých v mojom okolí, ktorých mám rád, a snažil som sa zistiť, či by sa im dalo nejako pomôcť. Uvedomil som si, že som nepoznal odpoveď na veľa úplne základných otázok, napríklad, čo vyvoláva závislosť? Prečo neupustíme od tohto prístupu, ktorý zjavne nefunguje, neexistuje snáď lepší spôsob, ktorý by sme mohli skúsiť?
So I read loads of stuff about it, and I couldn't really find the answers I was looking for, so I thought, okay, I'll go and sit with different people around the world who lived this and studied this and talk to them and see if I could learn from them. And I didn't realize I would end up going over 30,000 miles at the start, but I ended up going and meeting loads of different people, from a transgender crack dealer in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to a scientist who spends a lot of time feeding hallucinogens to mongooses to see if they like them -- it turns out they do, but only in very specific circumstances -- to the only country that's ever decriminalized all drugs, from cannabis to crack, Portugal. And the thing I realized that really blew my mind is, almost everything we think we know about addiction is wrong, and if we start to absorb the new evidence about addiction, I think we're going to have to change a lot more than our drug policies.
Veľa som toho o tejto téme prečítal a nenašiel som hľadané odpovede, rozhodol som sa teda stretnúť sa s ľuďmi z celého sveta, ktorí závislosťou prešli alebo ju skúmali, porozprávam sa s nimi a uvidím, či sa od nich niečo dozviem. Nevedel som, že budem musieť precestovať 30 000 km, ale odhodlal som sa a spoznal rôznych ľudí, od tranzvestitného predajcu kreku v Brownsville v Brooklyne po vedca, ktorý venoval veľa času kŕmeniu mangúst halucinogénmi, lebo chcel zistiť, či im chutia... a áno, chutia im, ale iba za určitých podmienok... navštívil som jedinú krajinu, ktorá dekriminalizovala všetky drogy, od marihuany po krak, Portugalsko. A uvedomil som si niečo, čo ma naozaj prekvapilo, že skoro všetko, čo si o závislosti myslíme, je omyl a keď pochopíme nové zistenia o závislosti, mali by sme zmeniť viac než len drogovú politiku,
But let's start with what we think we know, what I thought I knew. Let's think about this middle row here. Imagine all of you, for 20 days now, went off and used heroin three times a day. Some of you look a little more enthusiastic than others at this prospect. (Laughter) Don't worry, it's just a thought experiment. Imagine you did that, right? What would happen? Now, we have a story about what would happen that we've been told for a century. We think, because there are chemical hooks in heroin, as you took it for a while, your body would become dependent on those hooks, you'd start to physically need them, and at the end of those 20 days, you'd all be heroin addicts. Right? That's what I thought.
Začnime tým, čo si myslíme, že vieme, tým, čo som pokladal za fakt. Tento rad v strede, predstavte si, že by ste užívali heroín 3-krát denne počas 20 dní. Niektorí prejavujú viac nadšenia ako iní. (smiech) Nebojte sa, je to iba teoretický pokus. Predstavte si to, dobre. Čo by sa stalo? Poznáme sto rokov starý príbeh o tom, čo by sa stalo. Myslíme si, že pre chemické návykové látky v heroíne, ak ho užívame po určitý čas, naše telo sa na nich stane závislé, začne ich fyzicky potrebovať a po 20 dňoch všetci skončíte závislí na heroíne. To som si myslel.
First thing that alerted me to the fact that something's not right with this story is when it was explained to me. If I step out of this TED Talk today and I get hit by a car and I break my hip, I'll be taken to hospital and I'll be given loads of diamorphine. Diamorphine is heroin. It's actually much better heroin than you're going to buy on the streets, because the stuff you buy from a drug dealer is contaminated. Actually, very little of it is heroin, whereas the stuff you get from the doctor is medically pure. And you'll be given it for quite a long period of time. There are loads of people in this room, you may not realize it, you've taken quite a lot of heroin. And anyone who is watching this anywhere in the world, this is happening. And if what we believe about addiction is right -- those people are exposed to all those chemical hooks -- What should happen? They should become addicts. This has been studied really carefully. It doesn't happen; you will have noticed if your grandmother had a hip replacement, she didn't come out as a junkie. (Laughter)
Na tomto príbehu mi po prvýkrát niečo nesedelo hneď, keď som ho počul. Ak by ma po tejto konferencii TEDu prešlo auto a zlomilo by mi bedro, odviezli by ma do nemocnice a podávali by mi veľa diamorfínu. Diamorfín je heroín. Dokonca oveľa lepší heroín ako ten, čo by ste kúpili na ulici pretože ten, čo kúpite od dílera, je kontaminovaný. Len veľmi málo z neho je naozaj heroín. Heroín na lekársky predpis je čistý. Predpíšu vám ho na dosť dlhý čas. V publiku je veľa ľudí, ktorí si nie sú vedomí, že požili veľa heroínu. A toto sa deje na celom svete. Ak je pravda to, čo si myslíme o závislosti... všetci ľudia sú vystavení návykovým látkam... Čo by sa malo stať? Mali by byť závislí. Dôkladne sa to skúmalo. A nedeje sa to. Keď vašej babke voperujú umelý bedrový kĺb, nevyjde z nemocnice závislá. (smiech)
And when I learned this, it seemed so weird to me, so contrary to everything I'd been told, everything I thought I knew, I just thought it couldn't be right, until I met a man called Bruce Alexander. He's a professor of psychology in Vancouver who carried out an incredible experiment I think really helps us to understand this issue. Professor Alexander explained to me, the idea of addiction we've all got in our heads, that story, comes partly from a series of experiments that were done earlier in the 20th century. They're really simple. You can do them tonight at home if you feel a little sadistic. You get a rat and you put it in a cage, and you give it two water bottles: One is just water, and the other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drug water and almost always kill itself quite quickly. So there you go, right? That's how we think it works. In the '70s, Professor Alexander comes along and he looks at this experiment and he noticed something. He said ah, we're putting the rat in an empty cage. It's got nothing to do except use these drugs. Let's try something different. So Professor Alexander built a cage that he called "Rat Park," which is basically heaven for rats. They've got loads of cheese, they've got loads of colored balls, they've got loads of tunnels. Crucially, they've got loads of friends. They can have loads of sex. And they've got both the water bottles, the normal water and the drugged water. But here's the fascinating thing: In Rat Park, they don't like the drug water. They almost never use it. None of them ever use it compulsively. None of them ever overdose. You go from almost 100 percent overdose when they're isolated to zero percent overdose when they have happy and connected lives.
Toto som vedel a pripadalo mi to veľmi zvláštne, veľmi odlišné od toho, čo mi povedali, a čo som si myslel, že viem, myslel som si, že to nemôže byť pravda, až kým som nespoznal Bruca Alexandra, učiteľa psychológie z Vancouru, ktorý urobil úžasný pokus, ktorý nám, myslím, pomôže závislosť pochopiť. Profesor Alexander mi vysvetlil, že naša predstava závislosti sa odvíja z časti od rady pokusov zo začiatku 20. storočia. Boli to veľmi jednoduché pokusy. Môžete si ich vyskúšať dnes večer doma, ak máte sadistickú náladu. Pohľadajte potkana, zavrite ho do klietky a dajte mu 2 fľašky vody. V jednej bude čistá voda a v druhej voda s heroínom alebo kokaínom. Potkan si skoro vždy vyberie vodu s drogami, a potom sa celkom rýchlo zabije. Presne tak, však? Myslíme si, že takto to funguje. V 70. rokoch sa profesor Alexander bližšie pozrel na tento experiment a niečo si všimol. Povedal: „A! Potkan je v prázdnej klietke. Požiť drogy je to jediné, čo môže robiť. Skúsme niečo iné.“ Tak profesor Alexander zostrojil klietku, ktorú nazval Potkaní park, hotový potkaní raj. Bola plná syru, farebných loptičiek a tunelov. Najdôležitejšie je, že mali veľa kamarátov. Mohli mať veľa sexu. V klietke boli aj 2 fľaše s vodou, s čistou vodou a s vodou s drogami. A teraz príde prekvapenie: V Potkaňom parku potkanom voda s drogami nechutila. Skoro nikdy ju nepili. Žiadny potkan nemal nutkanie dať si ju. Žiadny sa nepredávkoval. Predávkovalo sa takmer 100 % izolovaných potkanov a 0 % šťastných potkanov s kamarátmi.
Now, when he first saw this, Professor Alexander thought, maybe this is just a thing about rats, they're quite different to us. Maybe not as different as we'd like, but, you know -- But fortunately, there was a human experiment into the exact same principle happening at the exact same time. It was called the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, 20 percent of all American troops were using loads of heroin, and if you look at the news reports from the time, they were really worried, because they thought, my God, we're going to have hundreds of thousands of junkies on the streets of the United States when the war ends; it made total sense. Now, those soldiers who were using loads of heroin were followed home. The Archives of General Psychiatry did a really detailed study, and what happened to them? It turns out they didn't go to rehab. They didn't go into withdrawal. Ninety-five percent of them just stopped. Now, if you believe the story about chemical hooks, that makes absolutely no sense, but Professor Alexander began to think there might be a different story about addiction. He said, what if addiction isn't about your chemical hooks? What if addiction is about your cage? What if addiction is an adaptation to your environment?
Keď to profesor Alexander po prvýkrát spozoroval, pomyslel si: „Možno sa to deje iba u potkanov, nie sú ako my. Možno sa od nás nelíšia až tak, ako by sme chceli.“ Našťastie sa v tom obodbí uskutočnil podobný pokus na ľuďoch. Nazvali ho Vojna vo Vietname. Vo Vietname užívalo heroín 20 % amerických vojakov a ak ste videli správy z toho obdobia, vyjadrovali obavy, lebo sa predpokladalo: „Preboha, keď sa vojna skončí, v uliciach USA budú státisíce drogovo závislých.“ Dávalo to zmysel. Tí vojaci, ktorí užívali heroín, boli odprevadení domov. Archív všeobecnej psychiatrie uskutočnil veľmi dôslednú štúdiu a čo sa s nimi stalo? Nezúčastnili sa odvykacej kúry. Nemali abstinenčné príznaky. 95 % prestalo brať heroín. Ak veríte v návykové látky, nedáva to zmysel a profesor Alexander začal tušiť, že existuje iný príbeh o závislosti. Povedal: „A ak závislosť nesúvisí s návykovými látkami? Čo ak závislosť súvisí s klietkou? Čo ak závislosť súvisí so schopnosťou prispôsobiť sa prostrediu.“
Looking at this, there was another professor called Peter Cohen in the Netherlands who said, maybe we shouldn't even call it addiction. Maybe we should call it bonding. Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond, and when we're happy and healthy, we'll bond and connect with each other, but if you can't do that, because you're traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life, you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief. Now, that might be gambling, that might be pornography, that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis, but you will bond and connect with something because that's our nature. That's what we want as human beings.
Pozrime sa na to takto, iný profesor, Peter Cohen z Holandska, povedal: „Možno by sme to ani nemali volať závislosť. Možno by sme to mali volať vzťahy.“ Človek má prirodzenú vrodenú potrebu vzťahov a keď sme šťastní a zdraví, nadväzujeme vzťahy s ostatnými, ale ak sa to nedá, lebo sa cítite traumatizovaní, izolovaní alebo vám život udelil silný úder, nadviažete vzťah s niečím, čo vám prinesie istý pocit úľavy. Môžu to byť hazardné hry, pornografia, kokaín alebo marihuana, nadviažete s niečím vzťah, lebo to je naša prirodzenosť. Je to naša ľudská potreba.
And at first, I found this quite a difficult thing to get my head around, but one way that helped me to think about it is, I can see, I've got over by my seat a bottle of water, right? I'm looking at lots of you, and lots of you have bottles of water with you. Forget the drugs. Forget the drug war. Totally legally, all of those bottles of water could be bottles of vodka, right? We could all be getting drunk -- I might after this -- (Laughter) -- but we're not. Now, because you've been able to afford the approximately gazillion pounds that it costs to get into a TED Talk, I'm guessing you guys could afford to be drinking vodka for the next six months. You wouldn't end up homeless. You're not going to do that, and the reason you're not going to do that is not because anyone's stopping you. It's because you've got bonds and connections that you want to be present for. You've got work you love. You've got people you love. You've got healthy relationships. And a core part of addiction, I came to think, and I believe the evidence suggests, is about not being able to bear to be present in your life.
Na začiatku mi to nešlo do hlavy, ale niečo mi pomohlo pochopiť to. Na sedadle mám fľašu vody, však? Vidím, že mnohí máte so sebou fľašu vody. Zabudnite na drogy a boj proti nim. Legálne by v tých fľašiach mohla byť vodka, však? Všetci by sme sa mohli opiť, ja sa možno aj opijem neskôr, (smiech) ale neurobíme to. Keďže si môžete dovoliť zaplatiť kopec peňazí za vstupenku na TED, myslím, že si môžete dovoliť aj piť vodku počas najbližšieho polroka. Neskončíte na ulici. Nie a nie preto, že by vás niekto zastavil, ale preto, že máte vzťahy a kontakty, ktoré chcete zachovať. Máte prácu, ktorú milujete. Osoby, ktoré milujete. Máte zdravé vzťahy a základom závislosti, podľa mňa a podľa dôkazov, je naša neschopnosť byť prítomní v našom živote.
Now, this has really significant implications. The most obvious implications are for the War on Drugs. In Arizona, I went out with a group of women who were made to wear t-shirts saying, "I was a drug addict," and go out on chain gangs and dig graves while members of the public jeer at them, and when those women get out of prison, they're going to have criminal records that mean they'll never work in the legal economy again. Now, that's a very extreme example, obviously, in the case of the chain gang, but actually almost everywhere in the world we treat addicts to some degree like that. We punish them. We shame them. We give them criminal records. We put barriers between them reconnecting. There was a doctor in Canada, Dr. Gabor Maté, an amazing man, who said to me, if you wanted to design a system that would make addiction worse, you would design that system.
Toto má naozaj vážne dôsledky. Najzjavnejšie sa to prejavuje v boji proti drogám. V Arizone som si vyšiel so skupinou žien, ktoré prinútili nosiť tričká s nápisom „Bola som drogovo závislá“, chodiť spútané reťazami a kopať hroby, kým sa im obecenstvo posmievalo, a keď vyjdú z väzenia, dostane sa to do ich registra trestov, čo znamená, že nikdy nebudú môcť legálne pracovať. Toto je extrémny príklad, čo sa týka reťazí, ale takmer na celom svete sa nejako takto správame k závislým. Trestáme ich, zahanbujeme, zapisujeme do ich registra trestov. Vytvárame prekážky, aby nemohli znovu nadviazať vzťahy. Jeden kanadský doktor, Gabor Maté, veľký človek, mi povedal, že ak by sme chceli navrhnúť systém zhoršujúci závislosť, navrhli by sme práve tento.
Now, there's a place that decided to do the exact opposite, and I went there to see how it worked. In the year 2000, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. One percent of the population was addicted to heroin, which is kind of mind-blowing, and every year, they tried the American way more and more. They punished people and stigmatized them and shamed them more, and every year, the problem got worse. And one day, the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition got together, and basically said, look, we can't go on with a country where we're having ever more people becoming heroin addicts. Let's set up a panel of scientists and doctors to figure out what would genuinely solve the problem. And they set up a panel led by an amazing man called Dr. João Goulão, to look at all this new evidence, and they came back and they said, "Decriminalize all drugs from cannabis to crack, but" -- and this is the crucial next step -- "take all the money we used to spend on cutting addicts off, on disconnecting them, and spend it instead on reconnecting them with society." And that's not really what we think of as drug treatment in the United States and Britain. So they do do residential rehab, they do psychological therapy, that does have some value. But the biggest thing they did was the complete opposite of what we do: a massive program of job creation for addicts, and microloans for addicts to set up small businesses. So say you used to be a mechanic. When you're ready, they'll go to a garage, and they'll say, if you employ this guy for a year, we'll pay half his wages. The goal was to make sure that every addict in Portugal had something to get out of bed for in the morning. And when I went and met the addicts in Portugal, what they said is, as they rediscovered purpose, they rediscovered bonds and relationships with the wider society.
Na jednom mieste sa rozhodli urobiť presný opak a išiel som sa pozrieť, ako to funguje. V roku 2000 malo Portugalsko obrovský podiel drogovo závislých. 1 % obyvateľstva bolo závislých na heroíne, čo je strašne veľa, a rok čo rok stále viac uplatňovali americkú metódu. Ľudí trestali, stigmatizovali a zahanbovali a problém sa z roka na rok stupňoval. Jedného dňa sa stretli premiér a líder opozície a povedali si, nemôžeme takto ďalej pokračovať, máme čoraz viac ľudí závislých na heroíne. Zostavme tím vedcov a lekárov, ktorí nájde skutočné riešenie. Zostavili tím pod vedením úžasného človeka, doktora Joãoa Goulãoa, ktorý mali preštudovať nové dôkazy, a po stretnutí vyhlásili: „Dekriminalizujte všetky drogy, od marihuany po krak, ale“... a teraz príde zásadný krok... „vezmite všetky peniaze, ktoré míňate na izoláciu a odlúčenie závislých a investujte ich do zapojenia závislých do spoločnosti. Takú liečbu závislosti na drogách v USA a Veľkej Británii nepoznáme. Využili rehabilitačné zariadenia, psychoterapiu, ktorá má istý účinok. To najdôležitejšie, čo urobili, bol úplný opak toho, čo robíme my: hromadný program na tvorbu pracovných miest a minipôžičiek na zakladanie malých firiem pre závislých. Ak ste boli napr. automechanik, po uzdravení pôjdete do servisu, ktorému povedia: „Keď mu dáte prácu na rok, zaplatíme vám polovicu jeho platu.“ Cieľom v Portugalsku bolo dať každému závislému dôvod vstať ráno z postele. Keď som v Portugalsku spoznal závislých, zverili sa mi, že keď znovunadobudli svoj cieľ, znovuzískali spoločenské kontakty a vzťahy so spoločnosťou.
It'll be 15 years this year since that experiment began, and the results are in: injecting drug use is down in Portugal, according to the British Journal of Criminology, by 50 percent, five-zero percent. Overdose is massively down, HIV is massively down among addicts. Addiction in every study is significantly down. One of the ways you know it's worked so well is that almost nobody in Portugal wants to go back to the old system.
Tento pokus začali pred 15 rokmi a mám tu výsledky: Užívanie drog injekčnou formou v Portugalsku podľa časopisu British Journal of Criminology kleslo o 50 %. Medzi závislými klesol počet predávkovaní a výskyt AIDSu. V každej štúdii je počet závislých výrazne nižší. O efektívnosti tohto opatrenia svedčí to, že v Portugalsku sa skoro nikto nechce vrátiť k starému systému.
Now, that's the political implications. I actually think there's a layer of implications to all this research below that. We live in a culture where people feel really increasingly vulnerable to all sorts of addictions, whether it's to their smartphones or to shopping or to eating. Before these talks began -- you guys know this -- we were told we weren't allowed to have our smartphones on, and I have to say, a lot of you looked an awful lot like addicts who were told their dealer was going to be unavailable for the next couple of hours. (Laughter) A lot of us feel like that, and it might sound weird to say, I've been talking about how disconnection is a major driver of addiction and weird to say it's growing, because you think we're the most connected society that's ever been, surely. But I increasingly began to think that the connections we have or think we have, are like a kind of parody of human connection. If you have a crisis in your life, you'll notice something. It won't be your Twitter followers who come to sit with you. It won't be your Facebook friends who help you turn it round. It'll be your flesh and blood friends who you have deep and nuanced and textured, face-to-face relationships with, and there's a study I learned about from Bill McKibben, the environmental writer, that I think tells us a lot about this. It looked at the number of close friends the average American believes they can call on in a crisis. That number has been declining steadily since the 1950s. The amount of floor space an individual has in their home has been steadily increasing, and I think that's like a metaphor for the choice we've made as a culture. We've traded floorspace for friends, we've traded stuff for connections, and the result is we are one of the loneliest societies there has ever been. And Bruce Alexander, the guy who did the Rat Park experiment, says, we talk all the time in addiction about individual recovery, and it's right to talk about that, but we need to talk much more about social recovery. Something's gone wrong with us, not just with individuals but as a group, and we've created a society where, for a lot of us, life looks a whole lot more like that isolated cage and a whole lot less like Rat Park.
Má to politické dôsledky. Celý tento výskum má celý rad politických dôsledkov. V našej kultúre sa ľudia cítia čoraz náchylnejší na rôzne závislosti, od smartfónu po nákupy alebo jedlo. Pred touto prednáškou vám povedali... že je tu zakázané mať zapnuté mobily a poviem vám, že mnohí ste sa zatvárili rovnako ako závislí, keď im povedia, že im díler nebude pár hodín k dispozícii. (smiech) Mnohí sme sa tak pocítili a môže to vyznieť zvláštne, poviem vám, že izolácia je hlavný motor závislosti a naberá na sile, lebo spoločnosť ešte nikdy nebola taká prepojená ako v súčasnosti. Stále viac som presvedčený, že kontakty, ktoré máme alebo veríme, že máme, sú niečo ako paródia kontaktov naživo. Ak prechádzate životnou krízou, niečo si uvedomíte. Nebudú pri vás stáť fanúšikovia z Twitteru. Nepomôžu vám priatelia z Facebooku, ale priatelia s mäsa a kostí, s ktorými máte hlboké usporiadané vzťahy zoči voči. Spisovateľ a aktivista pre životné prostredie Bill McKibben ma upozornil na štúdiu, v ktorej sa o tom veľa hovorí. Zisťovali v nej počet blízkych priateľov, ktorým môže údajne priemerný Američan zavolať, keď sa ocitne v kríze. Ich počet od roku 1950 postupne klesal. Rozloha osobného priestoru doma postupne rástla. Myslím si, že je to ako metafora rozhodnutí, ktoré sme ako komunita spravili. Vymieňame kamarátov za priestor a vzťahy za veci a výsledkom je, že sme jedna z najsamotárskejších spoločností v dejinách ľudstva. Bruce Alexander, ktorý vytvoril potkaní park, hovorí: „Vždy hovoríme o závislosti ako o vyzdravení u jednotlivca a je to v poriadku, ale mali by sme viac hovoriť o uzdravení v spoločnosti. Niečo s nami nie je v poriadku, s nami ako jednotlivcami aj ako so skupinou. Vytvorili sme spoločnosť, v ktorej sa život mnohých podobá skôr na prázdnu klietku ako na potkaní park.
If I'm honest, this isn't why I went into it. I didn't go in to the discover the political stuff, the social stuff. I wanted to know how to help the people I love. And when I came back from this long journey and I'd learned all this, I looked at the addicts in my life, and if you're really candid, it's hard loving an addict, and there's going to be lots of people who know in this room. You are angry a lot of the time, and I think one of the reasons why this debate is so charged is because it runs through the heart of each of us, right? Everyone has a bit of them that looks at an addict and thinks, I wish someone would just stop you. And the kind of scripts we're told for how to deal with the addicts in our lives is typified by, I think, the reality show "Intervention," if you guys have ever seen it. I think everything in our lives is defined by reality TV, but that's another TED Talk. If you've ever seen the show "Intervention," it's a pretty simple premise. Get an addict, all the people in their life, gather them together, confront them with what they're doing, and they say, if you don't shape up, we're going to cut you off. So what they do is they take the connection to the addict, and they threaten it, they make it contingent on the addict behaving the way they want. And I began to think, I began to see why that approach doesn't work, and I began to think that's almost like the importing of the logic of the Drug War into our private lives.
Pravdu povediac, nezahĺbil som sa do štúdia závislosti, aby som skúmal politické či sociálne aspekty, chcel som zistiť, ako pomôcť ľuďom, ktorých mám rád. Keď som sa vrátil z tej dlhej cesty a naučil som sa toto všetko, pozrel som sa na závislých v mojom živote a, pravdu povediac, je ťažké závislých milovať a mnohí v tejto sále to vedia. Väčšinu času sú nahnevaní a táto prednáška je taká kontroverzná aj preto, že preniká do sŕdc všetkých, však? Všetci majú kúsok z nich, keď si pri pohľade na závislého pomyslia: „Kiežby ťa niekto dokázal zastaviť.“ Postupy, ako si poradiť so závislými v našom živote, môžeme vidieť v americkej reality show Intervention, možno ste ju videli. Celý náš život objasňujú reality show, ale to je ďalšia prednáška pre TED. Ak ste videli program Intervention, má jednoduchý dej. Hľadajú závislého a všetky osoby v jeho živote, zhromaždia ich, vysvetlia im situáciu a tie mu povedia, keď sa nedáš dokopy, nepočítaj s nami. Závislého pripravia o vzťahy, vyhrážajú sa mu a nútia ho k správaniu, ktoré si oni želajú. Začal som premýšľať a pozorovať, prečo tento postup nefunguje, a napadlo mi, že je to ako preniesť logiku boja proti drogám do nášho súkromného života.
So I was thinking, how could I be Portuguese? And what I've tried to do now, and I can't tell you I do it consistently and I can't tell you it's easy, is to say to the addicts in my life that I want to deepen the connection with them, to say to them, I love you whether you're using or you're not. I love you, whatever state you're in, and if you need me, I'll come and sit with you because I love you and I don't want you to be alone or to feel alone.
Pomyslel som si, aké by bolo byť Portugalcom? Pokúsil som sa o to, nemôžem povedať, že by som to robil stále, a nemôžem povedať, že by to bolo jednoduché, ale závislým v mojom živote hovorievam, že chcem prehĺbiť náš vzťah, povedať im „Mám ťa rád, či už užívaš drogy alebo nie. Mám ťa rád nezávisle od tvojho stavu a ak ma budeš potrebovať, prídem a pobudnem s tebou, lebo ťa mám rád a nechcem, aby si bol sám alebo sa cítil sám.“
And I think the core of that message -- you're not alone, we love you -- has to be at every level of how we respond to addicts, socially, politically and individually. For 100 years now, we've been singing war songs about addicts. I think all along we should have been singing love songs to them, because the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.
Myslím si, že hlavná správa „nie si sám, máme ťa radi,“ by mala byť súčasťou každej interakcie so závislými, sociálnej, politickej či osobnej. 100 rokov sme o závislých spievali vojnové piesne. Myslím si, že by sme im všetci mali spievať piesne lásky, lebo opakom závislosti nie je triezvosť. Opakom závislosti sú vzťahy.
Thank you.
Ďakujem.
(Applause)
(potlesk)